This is your resource for exploring various topics in glass: delve deeper with this collection of articles, multimedia, and virtual books all about glass. Content is frequently added to the area, so check back for new items. If you have a topic you'd like to see covered, send us your suggestion. If you have a specific question, Ask a Glass Question at our Rakow Research Library.

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This clip is from an interview with Max Erlacher, former master engraver for Steuben, interviewed May 2010. Max Erlacher was born in Innsbruck, Austria. As a young man he attended a glass technical school to learn the craft of glass engraving. Upon the completion of training, he worked in Vienna

Watch as Davide Fuin demonstrated for his class, Advanced Venetian Glassblowing, Venetian team-working skills, goblet making, and how to create historical reproduction pieces. Note: There is no final image of the piece made in the demo this week because, unfortunately, it broke.

Eric Goldschmidt, Properties of Glass Supervisor at The Corning Museum of Glass, and artist Wesley Fleming pair up to explore the lampworking techniques of Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka in this lecture and demonstration. Eric and Wes create glass sea creatures, both duplicating some of the Blaschkas’

Jiří Harcuba is a widely respected artist and educator whose specialty is portraiture in engraved glass. Whether the subjects of his portraits are friends, renowned artists, or historical personalities, Harcuba treats them all in a similar fashion, using spare sculptural cuts and subtle optical

The Czech artist Jiří Harcuba shows how he engraves with diamond, stone, and copper wheels, creating innovative portraiture on glass with the highest level of craftsmanship. He talks about his life, his work, and his interest in philosophy and psychological studies of major figures. He also

Watch Jiří Harcuba demonstrate for his Studio course, Glass Carving, Engraving, and Cold Construction, how to engrave glass blocks and vessels with stone, diamond, silicon carbide, and copper wheels. Students learned various cutting methods and investigated the optical effects of reflections in

Danish artist Maria Bang Espersen works to expand the viewer's perspective through her work in glass. By stretching and bending the molten material, her sculptures show a frozen movement, while the glass retains a soft look. In her March 2013 Residency at The Studio, Espersen explored movement

Brooklyn artist Adam Holtzinger brought his signature style to the Hot Glass Show for 2300°: Multiplied in February 2014. Holtzinger's work is about simple, elegant forms that incorporate intricate details.

The 2012 Rakow Commission honors the Danish artist Steffen Dam, a consummate glass craftsman, who will give an illustrated talk on his work. Although inspired by nature, Dam's work is entirely imaginary: the specimens he creates, in his words, are "plausible, but not from this world.&quot

The collectors' panel, "Celebrating a Century of Americana: Collecting Pyrex, Collecting Culture," features four experienced collectors in the field of Pyrex acquisition and research, who will enlighten and entertain with advice about America's favorite dish. This panel was part

Among the glass in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at The British Museum is a fragment of a late Roman dichroic cage cup. Although the fragment has been mentioned on several occasions, 1 it has never been described in detail. The find-place is unknown. Description The fragment (Fig. 1

A select group of rare books in the Rakow Research Library’s collection serve not only as repositories of early glass knowledge but also as artifacts of fine bookmaking. They were written by ancient authors and printed some 1,000 years later during the first century of modern printing (about 1450

When Johannes de Spira died in 1470, the printing business he had started was taken over by his brother, Vindelinus. Two years later, Vindelinus published Strabo’s De situ orbis, an ancient geographical text consisting of 17 books. A first edition of this work had been issued in Rome in 1469 by

Before his death, Maks Roosma, Professor in the Department of Glass, State Art Institute, Tallinn, Estonia, sent a brief article summarizing the results of his research into the history of the most important early glasshouse in Estonia. Professor Roosma had conducted an archaeological excavation on

In A.D. 301, Emperor Diocletian attempted to halt a rapid rise in prices by issuing his Edictum de pretiis (Edict on prices), which established maximum prices and wages throughout the Roman Empire. Copies of the edict were inscribed in Latin or Greek on marble panels and posted in prominent places.

The basic components of early glasses were soda, lime, and silica. In the Mediterranean region and Western Asia, these three components were usually introduced in the form of two ingredients: either natron (soda) and sand containing shell fragments (silica and lime), or ash derived from halophytic

In his monumental study of documents from the Cairo Genizah, the late S.D. Goitein drew attention to a letter requesting, among other items, "a wickerwork basket with red glasses from Beirut, and if they cannot be had, white glasses." 1 The letter, which is written in Arabic but with

This note discusses the function of a group of Roman glass models of boats. Six boats are known. They were found at Pompeii (two examples, including Fig. 1), 1 Palombara in Sabina, 2 Aquileia 3 and Santa Elena di Melma near Treviso in ltaly, 4 and St. Aldegund near Koblenz in Germany. 5 All of the

In last year's Journal of Glass Studies [Vol. 42], Mark T. Wypyski and the present authors described a fragmentary vessel decorated with silver stain, and concluded that it is Byzantine and of about the 10th century. 1 We compared the fragment with the celebrated bowl with painted ornament in

Dichroic (two-colored) glass is so called because it appears to be one color in reflected light and another color when light shines through it. Only a handful of Roman dichroic glass objects are known to exist. The most famous of these is the Lycurgus Cup, which is opaque green in reflected light

Among the objects from the collection of Ray Winfield Smith that are in The Corning Museum of Glass, one relief-cut fragment has provoked widely divergent views about its identity. 1 The object (Fig. 1), which Smith acquired in Cairo, may be described as follows: Fragment with eagle [55.1.148].

Introduction Chemical analyses and laboratory studies of glasses from the ancient and medieval worlds have provided a great deal of useful information for archaeologists, curators, and historians, 1 but until now, few such studies have been carried out on glasses from more recent periods. One

One of the remarkable periodicals in the Chambon collection, which was acquired by The Corning Museum of Glass in 1983, is entitled La Revanche des verriers: Organe officiel des travailleurs du verre en Belgique. 1 This publication was brought to the attention of the Museum's librarians by two

The Verses of Martial, which were composed between A.D. 83 and 102, mostly in Rome, contain 12 explicit references to objects made of glass (for which Martial uses the noun vitrium or the adjective vitreus), together with two references to "Vatinian cups" (calices Vatinii), which appear

The "Vase des Saisons" is the name given by Jean de Foville to a cameo glass bottle in the Cabinet des Medailles et Antiques of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. (Figs. A, B, C "Alabastron en verre camée" (Camée.623)). The object may be described as follows: H. (as restored) 16

Isaac Newton (1642–1727) is often described as the greatest of all scientific thinkers. He is most famous, perhaps, for having formulated the universal law of gravitation, as well as the laws of motion. However, his interests also included alchemy, theology, mathematics, and the branch of physics